Over the years, research on the implications of information technology on network governance structures has explored the “move to the market” and the “move to the middle” hypotheses. The middle is a space in which the logic and modalities of markets and hierarchies are intermingled. There is increasing evidence that most network relations reflect mixed-mode or hybrid logic. Despite the apparent advantages that make the middle so populous or “swollen” (Hennart 1993, p. 472), Kambil et al. (1999) highlight that it is riddled with uncertainty and high transaction costs. They label it “the conflicted middle” and propose that online marketplaces, specifically all-in-one markets, are capable of resolving this conflict. Unfortunately, however, Kambil et al. provide limited insight into both the nature of the conflict that plagues the middle and the ability of all-in-one markets to resolve it. To address these questions, this paper applies a role-theoretic perspective to the study of an e-marketplace that served the energy industry and evolved into an all-in-one market. Relying on an interpretive case study, this paper addresses the following research questions: (1) What is the nature of the conflict that characterizes the conflicted middle? (2) How do e-marketplaces, specifically all-in-one markets, help resolve this conflict? Our research highlights that brokers, trading partners, and agents who operate in the middle (where the contradictory logic of markets and hierarchies are mixed) experience goal, behavior, and identity conflict. All-in-one markets can help resolve these conflicts by supporting role integration at the group level and role segmentation at the individual level.
Virtual worlds are immersive, simulated, persistent, and dynamic environments that include rich graphical three dimensional spaces, high fidelity audio, motion, viewpoint, and interactivity. Initially dismissed as environments of play, virtual worlds have gained legitimacy in business and educational settings for their application in globally distributed work, project management, online learning, and real-time simulation. Understanding the emergent aspects of these virtual worlds and their implications for organizations will require both new theories and new methods. We propose that a performative perspective may be particularly useful as it challenges the existence of independent objects with fixed or given properties and boundaries, and focuses instead on situated and relational practices that enact entangled and contingent boundaries, entities, identities, and effects.
Embedded relationships with customers have been key in generating repeat business and economic advantage, especially in business-to-business settings. Such relationships are typically maintained through interpersonal interactions between customers and their providers. Lately, however, firms have been seeking to make their service operations more scalable by offering customers access to Internet-based, self-serve technology. This raises questions about the implications of inserting self-serve technology into embedded relationships. Recent research on the role of information technology (IT) within interfirm network relations suggests that relationships and the use of IT are complementary. However, most of this research focuses on the organizational level and fails to consider the instantiation of these interfirm relations by the actions and interactions of individual actors (e.g., customers and salespeople) representing their respective firms. In this paper, we explore the implications of using IT within interfirm relations through an analysis of customers' and sales representatives' (reps) work activities and interpersonal relationships. We apply a practice perspective that highlights how macrolevel phenomena such as interfirm relations are created and recreated through the microlevel actions taken by firm members. This analysis reveals that managing the complementarity between relationships and IT in practice is fraught with considerable tension. This study of WebGA, a bricks-and-clicks dotcom, highlights how the use of the self-serve technology made it more difficult for sales reps to build and maintain embedded relationships with their customers. The use of IT altered the nature and quality of information shared by the participants, undermined the ability of sales reps to provide consulting services to customers, reduced the frequency of their interaction, and prompted sales reps to expend social capital to promote customers' technology adoption. These chang...
Even though the literature on competence in organizations recognizes the need to align organization level core competence with individual level job competence, it does not consider the role of information technology in managing competence across the macro and micro levels. To address this shortcoming, we embarked on an action research study that develops and tests design principles for competence management systems. This research develops an integrative model of competence that not only outlines the interaction between organizational and individual level competence and the role of technology in this process, but also incorporates a typology of competence (competence-in-stock, competence-in-use, and competence-in-the-making). Six Swedish organizations participated in our research project, which took 30 months and consisted of two action research cycles involving numerous data collection strategies and interventions such as prototypes. In addition to developing a set of design principles and considering their implications for both research and practice, this article includes a self-assessment of the study by evaluating it according to the criteria for canonical action research.
In information systems, most research on knowledge management assumes that knowledge has positive implications for organizations. However, knowledge is a double-edged sword: while too little might result in expensive mistakes, too much might result in unwanted accountability. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the lack of attention paid to the unintended consequences of managing organizational knowledge and thereby to broaden the scope of IS-based knowledge management research. To this end, this paper analyzes the IS literature on knowledge management. Using a framework developed by Deetz (1996), research articles published between 1990 and 2000 in six IS journals are classified into one of four scientific discourses. These discourses are the normative, the interpretive, the critical, and the dialogic. For each of these discourses, we identify the research focus, the metaphors of knowledge, the theoretical foundations, and the implications apparent in the articles representing it. The metaphors of knowledge that emerge from this analysis are knowledge as object, asset, mind, commodity, and discipline. Furthermore, we present a paper that is exemplary of each discourse. Our objective with this analysis is to raise IS researchers' awareness of the potential and the implications of the different discourses in the study of knowledge and knowledge management.
Information systems research has traditionally focused on information as an object that serves as input to decision making. Such a perspective attends mainly to the use of information. Increasingly, however, organizations are concerned about the production of information. This paper focuses on the work of producing informational objects, an activity central to knowledge work. Based on data collected during an eight-month ethnographic study of three groups of knowledge workers--computer system administrators, competitive intelligence analysts, and librarians--I explore the informing practices they relied upon. These are identified as ex-pressing, monitoring, and translating. Common to these informing practices is the knowledge workers' endeavor to balance subjectivity and objectivity, where subjectivity is a necessary part of doing value adding work and objectivity promises workers authority and a sense of security. Recognizing that researchers are knowledge workers too, I draw on my own experiences as an ethnographic researcher to identify parallels between my informing practices and those of the knowledge workers I studied. These parallels are intended to challenge the taken-for-granted assumptions underlying scientific practice. l adopt a confessional genre of representation for this purpose.